SIMPLIFIED GUIDE FOR SEARCHES

IN FREE PATENT DATABASES

Module 3: Espacenet – International Search in
the European Patent Office

Researchers from the Division of Studies and Projects –

DIESP/Directorate of Patents, Software, and Topography of
Integrated Circuits – DIRPA/National Institute of Industrial
Property – INPI

Rio de Janeiro, July 27, 2018

 Table of Contents
Module 3:

Espacenet – International Search in the

European Patent Office

Final considerations and tips

© INPI, 2018.
Module 3: Espacenet – International Search in the
European Patent Office

Espacenet is the database of the European Patent Office (EPO),

with documents from over 90 countries and is available at
worldwide.espacenet.com.
To access the option of a more complete search, select “Advanced search” in the link
below.

worldwide.espacenet.com
Initially select the Worldwide database
to access
documents from over 90 countries.

The search must be

conducted with keywords in
English.

Operators “AND” and “OR”,

as well as the truncation operators (*, ?,
#), are
the same ones as the Latipat database.

Use up to 10 words per field.

Continuing the search for “motorized wheelchair”, we used parenthesis to separate
combinations and synonyms of the keywords, in English:

(wheelchair? or (chair* and wheel?)) and motor*

Click “search”
The result is a list of
documents with
English titles.

Only the first 500

results are shown.

One way to obtain all

documents is to divide the
search into periods of
time, specifying,
for example, the years in
which these applications
were published.
 wheelchair? or (chair* and wheel?)

The search can also

be more precise
by using the classification
(field “IPC”) combined with the
keywords in the title or the
abstract.

Since this classification is

suitable for motorized
wheel chairs and cars,
“motor*” was not included
in the search.

A61G5/04 (no spaces between characters)

Click “Search”
The list of results is very
extensive, because there
are a lot of inventions
related to motorized
wheelchairs.
 wheelchair? or (chair* and wheel?) and massag*

By detailing the subject of the

search, the results are more
specific.

For example, the search can

be conducted for a motorized
wheelchair with a massager
to avoid bedsores in the
user.

Therefore, we included the

term “massag*” for
“massage”, “massaging”, etc.

A61G5/04
Click “Search”
During the analysis of the
list of results,
you can access the
documents of interest one
by one by clicking the title.

To analyze the
results, you can
access the
documents of
interest one by one
by clicking the title.
Therefore, we obtain the bibliographic data and the abstract of the document selected.

To see the full document, click “Original document”.

 To read the document page to page, To save, click
click the arrows below. “Download”.

These procedures
have been analyzed
in Part 2.

The document is in
Chinese.
It is possible to obtain
a machine translation.
Click
“Description”

If the description (specification) is available, it will be shown in the

screen in the original language.
Then, click “patent translate”
The translation into English (by a machine, with limitations) is shown in a
new window.
 SUMMARY: Comparative table for the free patent databases for search

Free Keyword Number of

Logical Truncation
patent Scope language terms per
operators operators
databases field

Indefinite
(time for
Only
response “AND”
INPI documents
Portuguese increases with “OR” *
filed in
the number of “AND NOT”
Brazil terms
used)

Documents
filed in
“AND” *
Latin America Portuguese and Up to 4
LATIPAT “OR” ?
countries and Spanish
“NOT” #
Spain
(20 countries)

“AND” *
More than 90 Preferentially
ESPACENET countries Up to 10 “OR” ?
English
“NOT” #
 Final Considerations and Tips

•The databases described have similar search fields, as well as

truncation characters (*) and logical operators (AND OR).

• The logical operator “AND” must be used to combine characteristics,

and “OR”, for synonyms.

• The operators “AND NOT” and “NOT”, included in the table above,
must be used with extreme caution and, therefore, are not introduced in
this basic guide.

• In the databases in which only * is a truncation character, you must

observe the real need and the best way to use it.
 Final Considerations and Tips

•Truncation using * must be used in a smart way, as it can yield undesired results.
Example: in a search in the telecommunications field, the expression “tele*” will yield
documents related to television.

For example, if the objective is to recover terms related to mosquitoes and

mosquiteiros (mosquito nets), with different suffixes, in a search in Portuguese in
Latipat, some options would be:

a) mosquito, mosquitos, mosquiteiro use mosquit*;

b) for plural or singular use ? at the end: mosquito? (mosquito or mosquitos) ;

c) for masculine or feminine use # at the end: mosquiteir# (mosquiteiro
or mosquiteira)
 Final Considerations and Tips

• The complete list of codes of the countries can be found in

www.wipo.int/standards/en/pdf/03-03-01.pdf. Examples:
BR –
Brazil CN
– China
US – United States
JP – Japan
KR – South
Korea CA –
Canada
IN – India DE
– Germany
RU – Russia

Some codes represent organizations, such as EP, which represents the European
Patent Office.
NOTE: The searches in the examples were conducted in June 2015. Searches
conducted on later dates will yield documents unpublished at the time, therefore, the
list of results will be different.
 www.inpi.gov.br

Questions shall be sent to “Faleconosco”

http://faleconosco.inpi.gov.br/faleconosco/